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“Controculture 1956-1995,” the second volume of Antologia di cultura grafica series, contains twenty-five texts and forty-eight color images on the editorial and communicative production of groups and movements active in the political and artistic spheres that have played an essential, though not always recognized, role in the history of visual communication, giving rise to languages of rupture, bearers of alternative visions of society.
The selected texts and images testify to the birth and spread of ideas, forms of expression and techniques that have made visible some important countercultural movements since World War II, from Situationist détournement to subvertising, from pacifism to environmentalism, from feminism to gender and ethnic minority claims, from the psychedelic revolution to the sexual revolution, from punk provocations to the visual research of underground magazines and Soviet-era samizdats.
The resulting picture shows how the practical and theoretical action of countercultures, often addressing issues that are still relevant today for the first time, helped change not only visual languages but the very way of doing graphic art, both in approach and style.
Silvia Sfligiotti (1967) is a graphic designer and an independent researcher. She teaches at ISIA Urbino, the Polytechnic School of Design in Milan, and the University of the Republic of San Marino. She has curated several publications and exhibitions on visual communication and was co-editor of the magazine Progetto Grafico. Her work focuses particularly on the history and critique of graphic design and on design education from a somatic perspective.
Francesco Ciaponi (1978) teaches History of Printing and Publishing at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts, and at the LABA Free Academy of Fine Arts in Rimini, and Visual Communication at the Modartech Institute in Pontedera. He is the founder of the EdF Study Center, a research project focused on the most marginal and experimental forms of communication, and the editorial director of Contesto, a biannual magazine dedicated to independent publishing and text culture.
